Topic: Anime & Manga (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

@Ralizah I watched that years ago and was disappointed with Haibane Renmei but it does improve half way through the series. I think people give it too much credit for it’s themes and symbolism rather than its quality itself.

God knows why they spend so much time on the slice of life stuff as there’s a lot of things they don’t answer by the end of it the show they could have spent time on instead.

Just finished watching the newest episode of YashaHime, and I don't know what the writers of this show are thinking. I've never seen a show do so much for so little.

There's so many unanswered questions & yet the show only has 6 episodes left (with the next one seemingly removed from the main narrative, so it probably won't answer anything or move it forward in any real way), which means either the last 5 are going to be a whirlwind series of events & info dump, or the writers are just expecting it to get a second season and are stalling around for that reason.

It would be ironic though. After the original InuYasha ended on a cliffhanger (which they eventually went back a few years later to complete in a quick and dirty manner), that the sequel could have the same date. At least the original had the excuse of trying to adhere to a manga. Here the stalling/meaningless episodes are completely at the discretion of the anime team.

This was my exact problem with This Ugly Yet Beautiful World. It had an interesting premise with some potential and then wasted much of it on the most generic 2000s era high school comedy possible.

This honestly doesn't sound much different from my experience watching Inuyasha on Adult Swim back in the day.

So, anyone in the US have Retro Crush? It's a free anime streaming service (ad supported, but there's also a paid option to remove ads) that specializes in vintage anime (mostly from the 80's & 90's, but they have some even older & newer stuff as well).

I've started watching Bubblegum Crisis & Medabots on it, and have watched Otaku no Video (an earlier film from Gainax, the studio behind Evangelion), and it's seemed like it's worked decently so far.

Not everything they have is an absolute classic of course, but they do have a few of the Lupin the 3rd series & films, the 90's Street Fighter, Fatal Fury, & Virtua Fighter movies, a Cardcaptor Sakura movie, etc., so it might be worth checking out if you have an interest in vintage anime (and some of it is in SD, since it hasn't had any sort of HD re-release).

@kkslider5552000 Just curious, what's your favorite version of Lupin III, and what movies and series have you seen? My favorite Lupin is green Jacket, though blue and friendlier red are a close second.

As for what I've seen...

all of part 1
a couple episodes of part 2 and 3 (including the miazaki episodes.)
I'm halfway through part 4 and watched the first episode of part 5

As for the movies,
Castle of Cagliostro, Mystery of momo (good minus the more... suggestive content.), green vs red, farewell to nastrodomas, and island of assassins.

I just watched the first two episodes of Pop team epic

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Did I take drugs or am I drunk right now? Maybe I’m delusional. Cause what I just watched can’t be real it was to utterly stupid.
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I loved it

I've seen around 6 or 7 of the movies/specials, all of Part 4, and a few episodes of parts 1, 2 and 5 each.

I guess I would say the first Lupin anything I got into was my favorite and I think was called Stolen Lupin. With Cagliostro, part 4 and the Detective Conan crossover movie all being a close 2nd really (not to be confused with the Detective Conan special that came before it, which is boring and not good).

@GamingTelescope, @kkslider5552000, While the topic is up, when it comes to Lupin my first experience with it was Part 2 (Red Jacket) back when it was shown on Adult Swim back in the day. It's been years so I don't remember any particular episode, but it's opening theme is so iconic & unforgettable.

Since then I've seen some of Part 4 (the one set in Italy), which I didn't care much for, and I watched Part 1 (Green Jacket) in full last year, which was pretty decent, though I liked the earlier episodes best (I streamed it on Amazon Prime, which oddly had some sort of commentary enabled on a few of the episodes, which was highly annoying though).

I actually haven't seen any of the movies, though I've been intending to for years.

@RR529 That commentary on prime sounds pretty annoying! If your looking for a darker version of Lupin like the first half of part 1, you might wanna check out Island of assassins, or the spin-off series the women called fujiko mine. It's a more R rated, film Nair take on the world, though I personally don't watch rated R stuff. Mystery of Momo was also directed by the same guy that did the earlier episodes.
And of course you could just watch the castle of cagliostro, which is on netflix, which is more like the lighter second half of part 1, combined with a studio ghibli film like castle in the sky. It's probably the best place to start if you want a Lupin movie. I've also heard that part 5 is tons better than part 4, but I haven't seen it yet so I can't say.

@kkslider5552000 Cool! Is the Lupin Vs Conan movie worth it if you haven't seen anything Conan?

God damn Kakegurui is good, I’ve only watched the first few episodes but it’s been awhile since I’ve enjoyed a new anime this much.

Probably? Conan movies usually tell you early on about what you need to know about it if you haven't seen the series.

@jump Both seasons are entertainingly insane, although the first one is definitely better overall.

I watched Kakegurui with a group of friends, and we were laughing almost non-stop at the absurdity of it all. Great show!

Yumeko, in particular, strikes me as being similar to a Danganronpa character with her godlike gambling abilities and weird associated fetish.

And yeah, the sol stuff in the first half of Haibane was almost unbearable. I get the feeling this could have been a really cool six-episode OAV, but at twice that length, it feels consumed by filler.

Once I finish Haibane this friday, Texhnolyze will be the only one of the Abe trilogy I've yet to watch.

@Ralizah By any chance have you seen the live action Kakegurui movie? I saw it added on Netflix, I'm gonna watch it once I've finished the anime as I'm curious if it translate into live action.

I suspect Haibane might be intentionally mind numbingly mundane as a weird art form to make you feel what purgatory actually is, in which case it is a masterpiece ;p

@jump I haven't, but I'd be interested in hearing your opinion. IMO, most anime, especially something off-the-wall and super-stylized like Kakegurui, doesn't translate well to live-action. I've watched a few anime --> live action adaptations, and it always feels really phony and silly, like a bunch of professional actors doing cosplay.

Still have nightmares about that Sailor Moon live-action show with its early 90s (circa 2003, mind you) CG, stilted acting, creepy talking stuffed animals, and endless underwear shots.

@Ralizah Yeah avoiding it becoming silly seems like too much of a task, whilst it's not a live action Dragonball Z which would require loads of super-poweredness the style and tone will still be hard to do. One of the things I liked about this anime was how well done the facial expressions of making the pretty characters ugly when revealing their motivations/true selves so it's that specific aspect is what I'm gonna be looking for when I do watch it.

Whilst I've yet to see a live action anime that really works it can be done, I mean Scott Pilgrim and Survive Style 5+ are basically live action anime and are great flicks.

@jump Just finished Haibane, and, well, I'm deeply unimpressed with it. We watched the extras on the DVD to get some answers, and I think we actually did. One of those extras was an interview with the creators, and they pretty much straight up said at one point that there was no background work done on the setting or concepts in the show, and it was "ad libbed" from beginning to end.

So, there's no larger mystery to it. Everything is fluff, and the metaphors are all very surface-y. It's the anime equivalent of writing a confusing, free verse poem for english class because you put off the assignment to the last minute and didn't want to embarrass yourself.

@Ralizah I'm surprised you went to the effort of watching the extras, I don't even watch the making of/extras of shows I do like let alone was bored by.

That sounds about right as there's lots of they could have done at the early stages for structure and pacing which seems to have been missed. I watched it years ago so maybe I'm remembering it wrong but are there symbolic clues as to how the girls killed themselves or is that something I heard people say so now it's in my head as fact?

@jump Well, the lack of worldbuilding or much in the way of storytelling was kind of frustrating, so we wanted to see if there was something obvious we missed.

The only real clue that the Haibane might have been killed at all was in the last few episodes with Reki. The dream she had about the train. The weird metaphorical train on Reki's final day with the Haibane, which I presume represented a greater spiritual doom. Reki's name basically meaning "one who was torn asunder," or something like that. They weren't particularly subtle.

I doubt there's much in the way of symbolism otherwise. The show wasn't planned out. Yoshitoshi Abe literally said writing the script was instinctual, like a form of automatic writing. And, as you point out, the early episodes are effectively a waste, like the world's most boring slice of life anime.

@JustMe I found it the other way round with the series being filled with the empty symbolism of Christ imagery and the last episode's psychobabble actually ties out the narrative theme of the show. The last episodes working or not is a different matter though.

The real reason the last episodes were the way they were is because they were behind schedule and over budget rather than for the sake of pretentiousness.